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Dead Languages & Polyglottery | ||
Tags: Sanskrit | Polyglottery | Romance Languages | Dead Languages | Alexander Arguelles | Greek | Latin | Reading | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 1 of 115 09 April 2005 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
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Truly Eric, why don't you (or whoever "you" are reading this) consider learning Latin or another early language? In my three months or so on this forum, I have brought up the issue of "dead" languages from time to time, but apart from this, I do not believe there has been a single mention of the concept. I really wonder why that is, and I honestly fear that it is almost negligent on the part of those interested in a polyglot forum. All of the great philologist polyglots of the 19th century began with a knowledge of earlier forms of languages, and I truly see my knowledge of Latin, Old Norse, etc., as being the foundation of why I myself have accomplished.
Why is there no interest in ancient or medieval languages on the part of the members of this forum? Modern languages are wonderful for their ability to enable us to particpate more widely in the other areas of the living world around us. However, older languages are unique in their ability to enable us to live diachronically. Many older and medieval languages have wonderful literatures to read, and all of them, as I wrote before, enable us to understand what Language with a capital L is, and how it grows and changes and is related to other forms of itself. On another topic, you asked me about the "critical theory hypothesis" regarding mother languages and the necessity of their being learned before puberty. I have never heard of this particular term before, but my entire experience both as a linguist and just as a human being confirms what I take the be the "strong" form of it. All those whom I know who moved to a new language in their teens are for all intents and purposes as fluent as native speakers, but there is something in the lilt of their intonation that immediately tells you that they are not, and those who are particularly interested in matters linguistic tend to lack the confidence to answer certain instinctive questions authoritatively. Those who move to a new language before puberty, however, have both native intonation and native confidence. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Eric Senior Member Australia Joined 7229 days ago 102 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 2 of 115 10 April 2005 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your response Ardaschir, your observations on native intonation and native confidence echo the findings of Mark Patkowski. (also mentioned in this book)
I can only answer for myself regarding dead languages, but the reason I did not start with Latin is: a) It's reputation for being extremely difficult. b) It's reputation for being dead outside a few academics who may have "Latin society" meetings. and ... (possibly the most important point) c) The possibility that I am not too smart and may not be able to have Second Language Aquisition (SLA) skills that will allow me to be fully bi-lingual (or only being able to know one extra language and that's it) Point c) is fear. I will see if one day I can be fluent in Spanish (20,000 words, express myself fluidly with no 'pausing to think') yet honestly even if I did complete this feat, would it not be logical to move to French and bypass Latin since Spanish gives me enough of a "Dirty Latin" background anyway? Don't get me wrong Ardaschir, I am not opposed to learning any language per se, but I see languages like Internet websites: There's many interesting ones but only so much time to read a portion of them. (and be comfortable in doing so = fluency) Regards, Eric Edited by Eric on 10 April 2005 at 9:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 3 of 115 10 April 2005 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
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There is no need to begin learning languages with Latin. In another post on a suggested sequence for learning the entire Romance family, I recommended beginning with French and Spanish and only then moving back to the origin.
For native English speakers, the most accessible earlier form of a language is clearly Middle English, which in schools never requires more than a single semester, by the end of which all serious students are reading quite well (and there are vast quantities of fantastic things to read). Although older IE languages are all highly inflecting and thus have lots of charts, learning them is really not all that hard, especially if you study on your own. I think the difficult reputation of Latin comes from it being taught in the "memorize all grammatical charts first" method traditionally used in school because it provides a structured way to give tests at regular intervals. Studying on your own, however, there is no need to do this. You can simply get an overview of the structure and begin reading easy and interesting texts with crutches in order to become familiar with the rules in practice. In fact, because there is no spoken component to learning older languages, you might in effect think that the workload only involves half the task of learning a living language. Well, my main point is that becoming a polyglot does not simply happen. Apart from enthusiasm and hard work, it requires planning and forethought. The perspective and understanding that knowledge of older languages gives is an integral and fundamental, indeed necessary, part of the process. I suppose it would be possible to learn all of the modern living Romance or Germanic languages by just going at them, one after another. However, I am convinced that acquiring Latin and Old Norse early in the sequence will make the entire procedure much easier and more efficient. When I reflect back on my own language learning process, I see that I wasted so much time and energy going down false paths. The reason I am writing my book, and the reason I am contributing here, is because there is a lot of advice that I would love to offer younger would-be polyglots so that they can benefit from my experience and hopefully avoid some pitfalls. Well, one piece of advice is certainly this: if the idea of knowing a dozen or more languages appeals to you, at least a few of them should be early languages, learned early in the process, in order for you to best obtain that goal. If you have this aspiration and yet you neglect "dead" languages, you really do so to your own detriment. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7225 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 4 of 115 10 April 2005 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
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You mention that "knowledge of older languages..is an integral and fundamental...part of the process," but you don't mention exactly explain why that is.
What, if I may, is so magical about learning a dead language--insofar as we are concerned with the pragmatics of second language acquisition (and not the joy of literature, historical perspective, etc)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| guillaume Pentaglot Groupie France Joined 7182 days ago 59 posts - 57 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 115 10 April 2005 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
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When I was at middle school, I was interested in dead languages. I wanted to learn Ancient Greek yet the school no longuer had that class (it stopped one year too early) and I took Latin.
I was eager to learn and I spent a lot of time studying on my own especially since I was fascinated by the mythology (that was actually the reason for wanting to study Greek). However, as the class went on, it became increasingly boring. We only did translations and studied grammar. After 6 month of class I didn't even know how to say 'hi', 'how are you ?' and well things that may seem useless for a dead language but that were important to me as a 13 years old boy. I didn't finish the year since I went for 5 month to Spain and stayed in total immersion in a Spanish family going to school there with Spanish kids. When I came back, it had become much easier to read the Latin texts and translate them to French even thought I had missed most of the grammar. From that point on, I always had very good results in translations and very poor results in grammar. I then stopped learning it at school because I didn't enjoy the class, had a whole lot of grammar to catch up with and didn't see why I needed it. Now I think I will learn Latin again one day but right now I'm concentrating on Asian languages since I plan to live in China as soon as I complete my master degree and because I find the culture associated with China, Japan and Korea fascinating. I'm currently learning right now Chinese, Japanese and Korean and when I will master them well enough to pass the 'airplane test' as you call it, I will probably go back to studying Latin just to unlock the wealth of culture and texts hidden in this language. Many schools in France taught Latin but I believe that the way it was taught was not adapted at all to the age of the pupil. When I started learning Latin, little did I care about Cicero's texts; I wanted to read the fascinating stories of the roman's mythology, I wanted to know how to speak Latin so as to have a secret language with my friends... The failing of the Latin classes in France is not to take into account the motives the kids have for learning the language.. Now to answer Seth, I think learning a dead language like Latin helps you get a much better understanding of the languages that evolved from it. This understandings is of course a good starting point in learning its descendants but more than that it helps you improve the feeling in the languages you already know. I haven't studied Latin enough and my knowledge of Latin is very low yet it did help me grasp some words in my native tongue: French. Edited by guillaume on 10 April 2005 at 11:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7225 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 6 of 115 11 April 2005 at 9:24am | IP Logged |
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I'm still not convinced.
While I see the benefit of knowing a parent language when trying to learn one of the daughter languages (merely as a reference point), I don't see anything inherently BETTER about learning one insofar as one is concerned with the pragmatics of second language aquisition. Let's also keep in mind how much time one would have to spend mastering Latin when he or she could have been working on French in the first place. Moreover, pragmatically speaking, it seems one would have an easier time learning French if they knew Italien first--so why not start with a living language? Barry Farber talks about how knowing any one language makes learning the next easier, but he never regrets not having learned Latin for the sake of learning Latin. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| guillaume Pentaglot Groupie France Joined 7182 days ago 59 posts - 57 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 115 11 April 2005 at 11:02am | IP Logged |
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I think it depends on the view point you have, if you plan to try and be well versed in all romance languages, then learning latin could be good. If you only want to learn say Spanish and French, then I'm not sure it would be very useful.
I will probably take time to learn well Latin some day because I am interested in history and I will want to be able to read some works of litterature that exists in Latin and because I want one day to master most of the romance languages (I don't think it will happen until I get old thought). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7225 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 8 of 115 11 April 2005 at 12:24pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with that.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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